


Programme 02

by Balabim



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 15:24:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16065950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balabim/pseuds/Balabim
Summary: "Alright, time to wake up, Programme 02"***The Capital, the one place that is unaffected by the life of lowbloods, where the highest classes of beings come to gain their knowledge and craft the Trollian race's future. Unfortunately, this includes a rather obscure robot one of the Capital's residents has named Programme 02





	1. Prologue

The sound of hissing was audible from anywhere you sat in block B – it seemed that Equius was working on another one of his projects. The last one, Project 422, had been a rather small disaster compared to the 421 ‘Projects’ that proceeded it. Endless curiosity that was nagging on my mind ushered me out of my seat to see what he was doing. It seems I wasn’t the only one, when I heard footsteps from the living space angrily stomping towards the room. Vriska no doubt. Deciding I didn’t want anything to do with her at the moment, I paused, allowed her almost audible ranting to finish before I made my own walk. Fortunately, I had gotten lucky, seeing her around the corner back to the living space before walking in on my own – Equius had obviously ignored the navy blood, to my pleasure, as I walked in.  
“Project 423?” I asked, walking towards him, my arms folded across my chest. The blue blood turned, a small smile on his face, “So, what’s the plan for this one?”  
“That I will have to keep private I am afraid Ampora, but 422 prove, exquisitely, that it is strongly possible that what I intend to do will work”. I nodded at his words. There was no chassis, to my confusion, but excesses of metal wiring that he was currently pulling together, extremely tiny ones that he could very easily snap.  
“This looks hard to do, how the heck are ya’ managin’ it?” I asked, kneeling down to get a better look.  
“I am not”. Explains the shattered window, likely a small rage.  
“So… No clues on what it’s going to be? Not even a little one?” I asked, becoming excessively more intrigued.  
“Well, I can tell you that this and one other item are the only things I will be doing here; the rest is too complex a design to even think about building here…”  
“Complex… Wait so, is this a new Programme? Rather than a project?”  
“Indeed… Programme 02”


	2. An Introduction to Life in The Capital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My life had been fantastic and extremely privileged – Mind I have nothing to compare it with, since I’ve been blocked up in the capital all my life I couldn’t know what a lowblood life it really like, especially since my ancestor shelters me and my dancestor from the truth.  
> ***  
> In which Eridan gives us a brief insight into the life of the residents of Block B, and the residents of the Capital

The capital; I’ve heard it a million times – that it’s a beautiful place, and I should be damn grateful that I live there. The last part is mostly family and familial connections – considering we’re all seadwellers, I couldn’t give less of a fuck what they think, they haven’t lived here, and I couldn’t give a toss if they think that it’s me being ungrateful. Its not; I get it, in comparison to the common lowblood, my life had been fantastic and extremely privileged – Mind I have nothing to compare it with, since I’ve been blocked up in the capital all my life I couldn’t know what a lowblood life it really like, especially since my ancestor shelters me and my dancestor from the truth. I only get the facts from people that live with me and I have connections with, which happen to be people I fucking hate – and I don’t believe their facts anyway, especially since their source is bloody Mindfang, that god-forsaken buccaneer who has spouted nothing but toxic bullshit towards myself, my family and my friends since the minute I met her. So, let’s make a long ass story very fucking short; Vriska Serket is a cunt, and the fact she lives in Block B drives me nuts.

To get off of the topic of things that drive me crazy, lets talk about Block B for a minute. In every lawn ring of the capital is a sky-high tower. Each of these towers has a name, whether it be “Spire”, “Steeple”, “Pile”, “Complex”, or “Development”, they all have a name of a similar calibre. Each of these blocks has 26 floors, each marked with a letter of the Alternian alphabet, starting at Z and ending in A. Where you live, is determined by the name of your tower and its floor. So, I live in tower “Block” on level B. Simple. Each of these floors houses 6, and I happen to live with people that, for the most part, I can stand. There is only one exception to the rule… Vriska. Fucking. Serket. Holy hell she drives me nuts, to the point its platonically past the point of any shade of black, I just want to fucking kill the girl. We happened to give the Kismesis thing a chance? Yeah, turns out she was manipulating me and has driven me to the point that my mental state is in fucking shreds. Thankfully, I happen to live with other people who keep me sane and her distracted a majority of the time; each of us students at the same University.

University Primero. The Capital University. Holy shit… That’s a whole new area that I could just dive straight into. The place is completely funded – not only by the government but by the two biggest and most powerful members of our government in our society; the Grand Highblood and the Condescension. I can’t stand either of them, and I have no idea why my ancestor is so obsessed with them. It so happens that these two government members have their descendants enrolled. Part of me wants to say its simply because of their positions in power that any of them got entry in the first place but, thanks to knowing them for years, I know that’s not the case and, despite what anyone says, they’re definitely not idiots. I’m enrolled in the science programme; specifically, the marine biology sector, which shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone, though the course is challenging. We’ve just entered the second semester and the stuff I’m learning about Physiology is blowing my brains out the water.

The other members of my level are doing very different things. It came as no surprise to me that one of my flatmates, Terezi, would go into Law by her first year, with a minor in Politics – she is the descendant of the Legislacerator Neophyte Redglare after all. Besides, with how surprisingly lazy she is despite her grades being extraordinarily high, it’s not necessary to be a genius to figure out how easy she’s finding her course. As for the other members of the house hold, there’s Feferi Peixes, the descendant of the Condescension, who’s also taking a minor in politics but is majoring in Psychology – which didn’t really surprise me, she’s always been good at reading people, but, at the same time, it’s easy to see she’s finding the course challenging with how often she’s hitting the books. As for the last girl of the house, Vriska (urgh), I believe she’s studying computer sciences but, really? I couldn’t give less of a shit. As for Gamzee Makara… Well, he’s the descendant of the Grand Highblood; he kinda freaks me out. He’s studying Music with a minor in Alternian Lit. He’s pretty damn intelligent, despite what most people say about him.

Then there’s the most odd and interesting member of the house. Equius Zahhak. He doesn’t talk about his family, so I know very little about his background, other than his dancestor who lives with my dancestor in Block A. He’s taking a course in engineering and, brings home a crap ton of projects. There’s only ever been one to live a full life that’s stayed into today but, that’s probably because his engineering is a lot to do with questions he has about engineering – possible additions, are there things he can bend the rules for slightly, things like that. There’s his one Project he had that he didn’t class as a project for a long time – as a matter of fact he dubbed it “Programme 01”. It was just a tiny little thing that ran on wheels but, the spooky thing about it, was it ran like a living organism, with an artificial heart and blood system, just lacking a brain. Programme 01 is still around, and we treat it like a beast of our own. Even when any of us accidentally knock it, we apologise to it, even though it doesn’t have feelings – according to Equius (‘I didn’t programme it to do that’).

But, one particular day always sticks out in my memory when I think back to the creation of Programme 01, and it was the day I found out about the idea behind it. I seem to be the only one intrigued with his ideas, the others usually busy with their own studying. I had happened to wander in on him going over plans and asked him about what he was doing. He explained Programme 01’s concept very simply – but at the time, something caught my eye, and I’m thankful he didn’t notice I spotted it, but it’s been nagging on my mind for some time now. It was a plan with his dancestor’s name scribbled onto it. ‘The Transfer Fluid’. As I took glances at it while he was going over his plans, I took over what the note said; just fragments. “Potential to extract” … “Likely work better on lower caste” … “Directly connected to the brain”. I couldn’t even think about looking back at the sheet so simply let my mind wander as to what the hell the two were planning with such a fluid, and if any of it was even possible. Thankfully, to my knowledge, nothing close to the sort has been going on with Equius or Horuss, his dancestor, who I asked Cronus, my dancestor, to keep an eye on.

The night I found out about Programme 02, however, things changed for me. With how detailed and intricate Equius was with that form of craftsmanship, I grew worried, very, very quickly. That night, looking over his shoulder at the interconnecting wires; grey, white, blue, red and purple became a fuzzy haze. Programme 01 had been risky enough, I couldn’t begin to think what he was planning this time. I watched him for a short amount of time, before wishing him a goodnight and heading to the central quarters. I found a rather disgruntled looking Vriska sitting alone in the middle of the blanket pile we had decided to make since none of us could agree on a fucking sofa. Without bothering to acknowledge her, I wandered through to the kitchen block, opening the fridge and pulling out a bottle of water, preferring the bottled stuff to the tap stuff as the filtering system wasn’t exactly the best and sodium chloride isn’t the greatest thing to have rushing through your insides. I stood in the kitchen in silence, allowing my worried mind to run circles as to what Zahhak was planning. I wouldn’t exactly call it rude but, it was at that moment, I was interrupted.

“What the hell are you doing?” Never mind, I’d call it rude, because it was fucking Vriska interrupting my thought process.

“Does my thinking bother you?” I asked, not even giving her the time of day for me to look in her direction. Opening the water, I finally took a swig; unsurprised at the condensation build-up beneath my fingers, I was sweating after all.

“You bother me” A weak one. I scoffed and turned on my heel, walking out of the kitchen, barely brushing past her as I made my way back to my respite-block. Shutting the door behind me, I let my mind refocus on what it had been focussing on before. I began to worry that Programme 02 would be yet another test project rather than a full run of something he had been working on. But what if he had been working on something? He said it was complex… Something he couldn’t do at home and, with the amount of equipment he had in his respite-block, that was surprising news. Programme 02 had to be built… The scary thing was my mind was telling me that this was an awful idea, and I didn’t even know the details of the plan. The other was saying that I should trust that Equius knows what it is he’s doing and that I could trust him, fully. But the panic wasn’t helping me… Not one bit.

***

**indigoArcher began trolling centaursTesticle [22:10]**

**IA: 8=D < I apologise for the late message Equius, but I have news**

**IA: 8=D < They’ve found some specimens they’re willing for you to take for %perimentation; apparently, they were found in some old battlefield. **

**CT: D-- > %cellent news. Thank you for informing me of this Horuss. **

**CT: D-- > I shall begin the tests tomorrow**

**centaursTesticle ceased trolling indigoArcher [22:12]**

**Author's Note:**

> So, I have this idea, and I would really like to continue with it, so I'll drop this here for now and get to work on the rest of it!


End file.
